Family

National Farmer Appreciation Day, 2018. My dad was in his final day of beet harvest and I was happy to have a day off on a beautiful blue skied day and get to spend it on the farm with him.

It had been many years since I’d squeezed into the cabin beside my dad, and it wasn’t just my larger size that made the fit feel a bit tighter now. Since moving away for college at 18, I became quite disconnected from my family’s farm, and a lot has changed since then. We have all been through a lot and we have all changed. And now that I am living on my parents’ farm again, I feel I’ve been extended a wonderful opportunity to learn more about their lives–farmers in general, and my parents, in particular.

The first thing I learned was the toll farming takes on the body. I was shocked by the aches in my body from sitting in a small, loud, vibrating cabin on a bouncing seat, turned a quarter-way around to look out the back window and make sure the digger’s blades are lined up appropriately over each row of beets. It made me feel grateful to be in a time in my life where I get to primarily look forward. And it made me eternally grateful for the hard work farmers put into our food.

The sun beams got me thinking about other weather, and about all of the hail we had in the summer. So much depends on the weather. Every day they are out there, preparing the field, planting the field, watering the field, (before roundup ready seeds) weeding the field, and every day they don’t know exactly how all that hard work is going to pay off. But they do it anyways. They care for the land. They grow food for other living things. This thought made me feel humble, insignificant in the great scheme. Mother Nature is so much greater than we humans, try as we might. I mean, so much goes into just one crop.

From speaking to my father, I estimate that over 400 hours of manual labor went into the 100 acres’ crop: disking the field, planting the seeds, managing the sprinkler irrigation, maintaining the equipment, then defoliating and digging and hauling the large brown beets to the factory over 4 days between 7 men.

Anyway, I was getting lost in thought, mesmerized by the perfectly straight rows being swallowed by the machine, when suddenly a long-forgotten memory from college popped into my mind.

Back in college, a classmate made fun of me one Fall when I excitedly announced that I was going to be able to get a new (used) car because my dad had a really good beet crop that year.

He made fun of me for something that was simply natural to me—that how much or when we bought things was determined by each year’s crop, each season’s weather, the market prices of corn, hay, sugar beets, etc. I didn’t understand his ridicule; I simply knew that some years we got to enjoy some extras, and some years, we simply got by.

So, as I recalled this experience from years ago, zoning out as we careened the bumpy rows I started thinking about society. And how we value a piece of paper with a face printed on it more than we value an actual hard working man (or his daughter) right in front of us, right there in the flesh. One real human will laugh in another real human’s face because her life was shaped differently by a piece of paper than theirs was.

I always knew me family wasn’t rich, but I never knew until that day Freshmen year that some people saw my world as something to be ashamed of.

Despite my father’s uncertain income as a farmer, he and my mother, who worked outside the home, made sure we five children had a home filled with books, homemade meals, clean clothes, etc. Even though we didn’t have everything, I never felt poor. My parents did everything they could to take the best care of me and my brothers and sisters.

I knew there were people in the world with a lot more money than we had, but I also knew that my dad grew the food we ate, made the best damn biscuits and gravy in the world, gave to the community generously, and I knew then as I do now, there was nothing in that lifestyle to be ashamed of.

But that day when Tony mocked me that my dad’s good beet harvest was the reason we could buy me a used car, my views and beliefs about hard work and good people was thrown on a different course than the one on which they’d previously been cruising.

A seed was planted in my stream of consciousness then, that hard work was not regarded with the respect it deserved. I continue to witness that We, the People of the United States, have an unhealthy relationship with work, and a very messed up definition of success, and what deserves respect.

I believe We have such a bad relationship with work and it causes a bad relationship with the rest of the world. On a recent NPA broadcast, I head Gary Cohn talk about a widely proclaimed sentiment that “There are American jobs that Americans just won’t do” and the controversial and rarely discussed perspective that if that is true, we need to keep the borders open. I know this seems like a stretch from my story about life on a farm, but it’s all related. We as a people do not respect hard work, but we respect money, which throws our balance off, a lot. Americans suffer from many negative consequences of not having balanced lives: poor health, long hours sitting in cars and at desks, chronic pain and depression, to name a few.

I recently quit my full-time career and 60+hour work week lifestyle so that I can pursue service work and serve the good of the people. Ideally, I would like to work much more in exchange of goods and services than for paper money. I think paper money has had some seriously bad, unintended consequences.

And I know that when I do something kind for someone else, it makes me feel a heck of a lot better than when I make money. And I know that I feel a whole lot better when someone does something nice for me than I feel when someone gives me money (but this isn’t about my love language-ha!).

I don’t want to shame anyone, that’s not why I’m writing this. I’m writing this because I cannot save the world alone. I know I am not alone, that there are many other amazing Earth Protectors, People protectors, human rights leaders, but We also need You. I do not want to shame you, I want to inspire you, but if guilt is what you feel when you think about these things, I ask you to sit with your feelings. Try to understand why you feel it so that you can better address it by making changes to your life and your actions: “If something offends you…look inward….that’s a sign that there’s something there.” (Whitney Cummings in Tools of Titans)

I write this because it is easier to do better than you might think. Doing better than yesterday isn’t about radical transformation. Those of you who know me personally have seen how many years it has taken me to get here, and I am just beginning my journey.

Even in the last couple of months, I have set big goals for myself, such as promising to only eat organic, local, and unpackaged food from that day forward. I didn’t mean to break a promise–when I declared that, it was truly how I felt at the time (not fake news, though) and then later when I tried to live that, I realized it wasn’t going to work out at this time (and not #metoo, either, because my organic, local, unpackaged Diet was understanding that I had verbally consented to something I wasn’t actually ready for, and It kindly extended an ongoing open invitation for whenever I am ready to jump into bed with It.) The truth is, none of us are perfect, and so I write this to remind myself of that, to remind you of that, and to extend a friendly hand to say, Come along with me. I’m on this journey, also. I am trying my best, also, and I would be happy to be on this journey together to support each other.

So, as you complete your ballots this Fall, here is something I ask you to keep in mind

The Farm Bill, if passed by Congress, will change the legal definition of hemp; Yes on Colorado’s X (think Yes…..seX….) will help Colorado and Colorado farmers, and is, I believe, one of the best things we can do for our economy and our planet. It’s pretty absurd that hemp is not already legal and in wide-production in the U.S. In fact, I think X is so positive, that even if 112, requiring stricter regulations on oil extraction sites, passes, we might be able to make up for economic downturn by embracing the hemp industry, as we are already leading the country in hemp production. So many products can be made from hemp, the non-psychoactive form of marijuana, that Coloradans could not only lead the industry in production of the plant itself, but also in manufacturing it into its various forms (rope, clothing, even fuel).

And please, next time you hear a story about a farmer, or come face to face with one, express your gratitude, not your condescension.

Growing up sometimes felt like hell. Ok, that’s a little extreme, but things were definitely not harmonious at my house most of the time. For starters, I have four brothers and sisters, and both of my parents worked full-time, my father running his own farm, which is more like an all-the-time job for ten months out of the year, and a part-time job for the other two months (much like the career I chose, teaching), which meant that mom and dad weren’t home a lot, and we five kids helped raise each other. With ten years between the five of us, and growing up in a small Catholic town, there was always something going on. From pee-wee basketball practice to family gatherings and birthdays (we had 16 cousins that lived in-state whom we were very close with), to mass, catechism, school plays, doctors appointments, emergency room visits, and trips to the grocery store, Mom or Dad were always on the road. (And did I mention that my family lived on a farm six to twenty miles away from the towns we traveled to for any of these activities?)

We spent a lot of time in our 1988, light blue Dodge minivan, driving up and down the curvy roads (curvy because, although we grew up on the plains of northeastern Colorado, it was near the South Platte river). Many parts of my childhood were idyllic in ways: We lived on a beautiful working-farm (where I can still remember watching my father and his friends, and then later helping, work cattle right across the street from our front-porch), our parents were very loving and involved in our lives and kept us very busy as kids, and we had a yard and fields to play in and even a creek just down the little dirt road behind our house. Yes, those things were all lovely, but the circumstances also left us kids unsupervised a lot. It’s true that many children were and still are safe in these circumstances, most of the time we were, also, but there was something about my childhood that tipped the scales from lovely, to at times completely frightening.

One of my brothers has bipolar disorder, and perhaps other medical disorders, that make him unpredictable and unstable, and at times downright dangerous. As we got older and were left at home more and more without adult supervision, even when parents were home but in another room or on another part of the property, crazy shit would happen. I began to fear and hate being home, despite all of the wonderful parts of it there. I’ve shared about my brother before and I’m sure I will again, but that’s not exactly what this story is about.

In the midst of all of the chaos of my upbringing, something happened that caused 5-year-old me some turmoil, yet turned into the biggest blessing of my life: Z, my best friend, moved away. Little did I know at the time, she would be my Harmony Way.

No, that’s not an expression. Z moved HOURS away from me, and she landed on a windy dirt road on the other side of the Great Divide, tucked into the foothills, on Harmony Way. 1501 Harmony Way, the home that was my refuge for one month out of every year. And it wasn’t just the escape that made this home so sweet, but that Lindsey’s family were the kindest people I had ever met, and still are the kindest people I know, to this day. If it wasn’t for their unconditional love and outpouring of support for me, I would not be the semi-balanced loving, open-minded person I am today. It was like all of the love and calm that these people generated, Z and her mom and dad, and passed to me in that one month together, somehow undid the damage that my brother’s terrifying outbursts and toxic insults and physical violence did to me in the other eleven months.

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Going from the middle child of five to “little” sister of one was like being an only child. I’m not just saying I was spoiled by them buying my favorite fruits and cereal and pot-pies for my visit, which I was, or that they spoiled me by making homemade tortillas and burritos every year upon my arrival, which they did, or that they treated me to camping trips where I didn’t have to fight over a fishing pole or be worried about my brother pushing me into a lake, but all of those things were definitely nice. I am saying that there, on my little slice of harmony, I truly felt listened to. I had a voice, and it didn’t have to shout over four others before it was heard. There, on Harmony Way, I my life was reshaped.

On Harmony Way, life was sweet. Z and I played outside with her ducks, chased lizards around rocks on the mountainside, and sipped sweet tea on the porch while we read books, uninterrupted, for hours in the sun. At night, we watched the stars from around the campfire. We talked about important things, we played games, we went for walks, and no one got upset and stormed off or started throwing rocks. We agreed on what TV shows to watch after dinner and no one so much as yelled. I didn’t have to think about the problems at home, and I got to explore my own interests and personality in a way I didn’t get to do at home. Being able to do that around extremely loving, kind, funny, thoughtful people was the most nourishing possible experience I might have never known I had needed if it hadn’t been handed to me.

People survive way worse conditions than those I grew up in. People find many ways to be balanced and healthy and happy despite toxic upbringings and unhealthy family members. People definitely find other ways, but there is no doubt in my mind that the path that lead me to where I am now began with Z on Harmony Way.

Recently, the series Thirteen Reasons Why was released on Netflix. This is based on a book my students have been reading for years. The tough subject matter encourages them to talk about the very serious issue, and since its release, every teen I know has watched it and is talking about it. Some people believe that it’s not good for them to be talking about suicide. That it is too heavy of a subject for them to confront, but since it is the second leading cause of death for teens and young adults, I believe people should be talking about it more, adults should be talking about it with them, and talking about how we and they are going to change that statistic and improve mental health in general.

Talking about real life stuff is good. We need to talk about things: mental illness, gender, culture, suicide, the past, the future, sex, love, hate, abuse, poverty, racism, sexism. We need to talk about it all. Everything. Talking is how ideas are formed, how good ones are embraced, and bad ones are dismissed. Talking is for building trust and community. Talking is how we gain perspective and learn that not everyone feels the same way about all things, and that that’s ok.

Not talking about things is for cavemen and cavewomen. Not talking about things is what keeps things from moving forward, what keeps us in the dark. Not talking about things is why some people are still treated badly, why some people don’t get the help and support they need, why some people kill themselves over things that can be overcome. Not talking about things has innumerable negative consequences on our world and the people in it: It makes people unable to fully understand things, it sends the impression that they are wrong, and it puts people in danger.

Despite how uncomfortable this topic makes some people, I’m not being overly sensitive, hyperbolical or dramatic by saying ignorance (i.e. not knowing things as a result of not talking about/learning about things) is the root of all pain and suffering. Ignorance is like living in a dark room with only saltine crackers and water when just beyond the door there is an all-you-can-eat buffet with attractive servers walking around with trays of freshly-squeezed juice. Ok, let me give this some context:

Mental illness reared its ugly head in my life before I knew what it was. My parents’ level of ignorance to the mental illness which afflicted my brother caused it to be a bigger problem than, I believe, it might have been had their parents talked to them about the mental illness in their families. I understand that it’s scary, and that talking about it, putting words to it, meant admitting it was real, but that doesn’t make it wrong. Not dealing with it is wrong. Despite how it may sound, I don’t blame my parents for ignoring his behaviors or not getting him professional help many, many years ago. I blame society.

There is a long history in our world of mistreatment of those afflicted by mental illness, of professionals performing cruel experiments and socially accepted treatments on mentally ill people, of treating them like outcasts. I think that especially in small, rural, conservative communities people just don’t talk about mental illness. Just like Rachel Hollis says in her blog post from 2013, admitting there was something wrong with a family member was too sad and embarrassing. Instead of there being an outpouring of support and suggestions on what to do like there would have been for a child with a learning disability or a cough that wouldn’t go away, the reality of a mental disorder that caused enraged and violent outbursts wasn’t something people brought up at the reception hall over coffee and donuts. Depression, addiction, manic-depressive disorder, these were (are?) regarded as things to deal with on your own, in the silence of your prayers, or at least behind a partition. Talking to a therapist didn’t seem to be on anyone’s radar. Talking about it in general was too much of a taboo.

I, on the other hand, who felt the force of my brother’s fierce mental clamoring first hand, (when my parents were at work or when we were left alone in a backroom of Grandma and Grandpa’s house or anytime we were away from adults) I tried to talk about it all the time. While my brother is funny, intelligent, has a great energy to him that can cause others to share in his excitement about things, he also has an alarmingly violent vocabulary, a tendency to hurt living things, the strength of a bull, and an unpredictable nature to go from laughing with you to having his hands around your neck. For people who knew the funny charismatic side of him, believing the other side existed was difficult; it was far simpler to dismiss the sisters’ complaints or chalk it up to “boys will be boys.” Admitting that his impulse to kill frogs might mean he was mentally, chemically unbalanced wasn’t something my parents seemed able to do.

I get it now, that what was going on inside his brain was uncontrollable and caused him to do things a healthy person wouldn’t do. I got it the first time I heard the term “bipolar disorder” in my high school psychology elective. He wasn’t just super mean and violent and unpredictable, he was sick. Knowing this alone didn’t make the moments more tolerable or less painful, but the knowledge gave me perspective, and it allowed me to eventually forgive him for his actions.

Which leads me to this post: to encourage people to talk about, and talk to, the people in their lives who are suffering from things out of their control so we can prevent terrible things from happening to them and others and as a result of their mental illness. I was physically in danger more than a few times in my life because of my brother’s mental illness. His children have been in danger because he did not ever learn to manage his mental illness. Not talking about things, therefore remaining ignorant about things, puts people in danger. It’s time we stop that.

I always used to say, “he’s going to end up in jail or killed if he doesn’t change,” referring to his tourette’s syndrome-style outbursts of cruel and unusual insults and behaviors. The better of these two possibilities has happened, and I would do anything to prevent the latter, but I know that it isn’t in my power to do that. Since he is an adult now, he has to be the one to elect to get the help he requires to be able to save himself. I also know that I am not going to be someone to sit by silently and pray instead of taking action to change how people see and talk about mental illness. The first step to changing that, is simply by talking about it.

A couple of years ago he asked me to attend a group therapy session with him, as far as I know his only attempt at getting professional help. Supporting the person who abused me, physically and mentally (though I will tell you right now the mental abuse had a more enduring impact on my life) was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life, and one of the best. At this session, I heard my brother take responsibility for his actions, and while the lessons learned there did not seem to last long in his life, it taught me that there is hope, that he wants to be better, but that his mental illness is in the way. The doctor there called it a dis-ease. He described what was going on in his head, and others who also suffer from mental illness, as a disruption of ease. That what a typical person sees as easy is not easy to them. I’ve also seen this dis-ease in many of my adolescent students, in friends and colleagues, and in other members of my family. It needs to be ok to say, have you tried therapy? in the same conversation where we tell the person we are here for them. You wouldn’t tell someone with cancer to keep thinking positive thoughts and expect it to go away; we need to deal with depression and other more serious forms of mental illness the way we deal with any serious illness: by getting professional and medical help for it while showing them love and support.

This reality of dis-ease cannot be ignored. It needs to be talked about. We need to make it acceptable in society, on social media, in schools, at home, in church, to talk about that which afflicts one in five adults, (one in seventeen for more serious mental illnesses like my brother has). The topic is gaining more exposure, thanks to celebrities like Lady Gaga and Prince William’s Heads Together project ; Robin Williams’ suicide also kindled compassion and conversation about the topic; and amazing student organizations like Brighton, Colorado’s (Brighton Youth Commission) BYC’s annual SPEAK Week is building momentum in getting people to speak up about life’s challenges. But we still have more work to do.

Please leave a comment about your experiences with mental illness, what you did to get help or help others through it.

Update, 6 May: A family friend shared this link with me if you’d like to do some further reading: http://lineacinda.com/

Those dearest to me often call me Bean, or Jilly Bean. It has always been a term of endearment. A sign of love.

This weekend, on Saturday, Jan. 21st, it became even more than that to me. As I scrolled through my facebook feed looking at pictures of all the women and men marching for women’s rights–rights the 45th president is threatening the nation with revoking, rights like affordable health care, funding for Planned Parenthood,domestic violence programs, and safe abortions–I came across a quote: “They tried to bury us. They didn’t know we were seeds” (quote by Dinos Christianopoulos).

These two simple sentences hit me like a ray of sunshine after a gentle rainstorm–they warmed my body like a perfectly heated bath. In this moment, Bean became not just a name my family calls me, but a symbol for who I am. This quote spoke to me so loudly because I, too, have experienced the weight of being buried, and now I also know the relief and freedom of sprouting.

For a while, I let that weight settle over me, resigning myself to darkness and unhappiness, pretending things were fine when really I could barely breathe.

I have been doing a lot of reflecting over that time in my life when I was most unhappy and about what eventually allowed me to break free from those circumstances, advice I plan to share with others soon; I have set new intentions for my life, and big goals for my future. On this day, this quote confirmed for me that I really am going to make it.

The old me, the one who felt helpless and lacked control of her own life, she is dead and buried now. She left behind some scars, but she left many more lessons, and she left me stronger than ever, ready to sprout into a new, strong, powerful life force.

The old me is buried and the new me is ready to climb to new heights, just like the magic beans in the story “Jack and the Beanstalk”; I will be the ladder, the support that gives everyone a step up to a better life (without the outcome of it all tumbling down because of a giant monster!). Though I’m not yet ready to reveal my magic, it will come to no surprise to you that it has to do with education.

Cooking is an act of love. And being that I am all about loving myself these days, I cook for myself whenever I get the chance.

I have always enjoyed eating and come from a family who shaped that. While we sometimes sat down to bowls of cereal growing up–in a hectic rush to get five children to school–most of the time we sat down to bacon and eggs, or biscuits and gravy, or omelets, or pancakes, french toast, or crepes. Cinnamon rolls and dinner rolls. Roasts, casseroles, lasagna, steak and potatoes, hamburgers, tacos, stir-fries. These are just some of the main courses I grew up with. I consider myself fortunate to have a family that loves food. It has given me a strong foundation for what I now consider one of my favorite ways to spend time with myself. Cooking is my therapy.

I am extremely grateful that food is a major part of my background, and I can see now that my love for food blurred my senses when I met a guy in college who was going to culinary school. He was an amazing cook. He learned from the best, had a natural sense for combining ingredients, and put a lot of energy into his cooking. I mistook it all for love. I admired coming home to the smell of garlic and onions and I fancied the variety of meals this guy cooked for me over the years. I applauded his ability to adapt his cooking to my dietary needs when I went through a period of severe food-allergies. I doted over the good food so much that it kept me from being honest about the toxic relationship we were in. There were other factors at play, of course, but food was a big part of my blindness. In the end, I became a better cook and learned a lot of tricks in the kitchen from of him, but more importantly, I learned that when you eat food not made out of love, that it can poison you. So now, I cook for myself.

Loving myself has been a conscious goal of mine for the last year and a half. That may not seem like a lot of time, coming from a nearly-30-year-old, but deciding to love myself was a conscionable and life-changing moment in my life. To be happy was my New Year’s Resolution for 2015, and now my life-long goal. This resolution set into motion my leaving that toxic relationship. Once I was out on my own, with full control over my life again, (including a brief stint beach-bumming it in Hermosa Beach, San Diego, and the Dominican Republic for a summer, where I also enjoyed cooking for family and friends) I realized how therapeutic it was for me to come home after a long stressful day, or even a wonderfully relaxing day, and spend a couple of hours in the kitchen cooking something tasty, something that would soothe my hunger and my soul. Since I was cooking for one, I would make dishes that kept well as left-overs. I would cook two nights a week, at least, and I would enjoy those dishes for the entire week, alternating between meals, sometimes mixing it up with a quick salad, or put a twist on something by frying an egg to put on top: always the perfect way to make leftovers taste new again. I also love to take leftovers from restaurants and mix them with fresh ingredients to make them into something new and exciting.

Bean loves beans! I roasted onions, green beans, and baby eggplants with garlic, salt and pepper, and olive oil, and added them to some beans, rice, and pork from a restaurant meal from earlier in the week.

Cooking has helped me heal. It makes me feel powerful and relaxed at the same time (just like good sex). When I stand in the kitchen with my knife in hand and some cloves of garlic or green beans or potatoes on my cutting board, I know I’m doing something good for myself. I take my time to carefully prep all of the ingredients with the attention to detail and patience some women exercise to apply their makeup before a date. I love to put on music and dance around as I prepare my dish. I move to a rhythm in the kitchen that makes my heart feel whole and my mouth water in anticipation of the hearty meal. Finally, I sit down to enjoy my work, my art, my joy.

Cooking proves to me that every situation can be improved. That I can make the most out of what I have. That things change. That time heals. That patience goes a long way. That life is good.

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Jillian. Jill. Jilly. Jilly Bean. Bean. It helped that I was all legs and full of energy. String Bean, Bouncing Bean. I liked keeping secrets but I loved to spill the beans. Bean Carries On is my garden. A place to cultivate thoughts about the things I care about. I’m a daughter, a sister, an aunt, a teacher, a gardener, a reader, an artist, a cook, and an empath.

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About the Author

Jillian. Jill. Jilly. Jilly Bean. Bean. And like a seed in soil, "Bean" stuck. Bean Carries On is my garden. A place to cultivate thoughts about the things I care about. I’m a daughter, a sister, an aunt, a teacher, a gardener, a reader, an artist, a cook, and an empath. I want this to be a place where we can learn together, so please leave comments and if there's anything you want to know, please ask!